Quotes About Understanding

Catherine Ryan Hyde

I think the whole problem with this world is that we control our kids too much. What they naturally are just seems too darned inconvenient for us, so we get impatient with it, and we tell them not to be who they are. No good comes of it. Not in my opinion.

Sometimes it's easy to want something for somebody else, even if it's more than you want for yourself.

That's pretty much the definition of a marriage, wouldn't you say? Two people are what they are, and they want what they want. Some of that works well for the other person, and some of it causes problems. The two people try to find some compromise or common ground. If they can't, and it can't be lived with, then the marriage is over.

Any decent man has to feel something for a woman who dearly loves him. Gratitude, if he can muster nothing else.

Look, I get it," she added. "I'm not without empathy. He upset you, and the upset needs time to move through you. It usually takes me about three days to let a thing like that move all the way through my system and move on. But while you're waiting, try not to feed it.

Sometimes people are scared of a thing that won't hurt them. But they're not scared for no reason. They're just not scared for the reason they think they are. Like when I was a kid. I liked to watch scary movies, so then I could be scared and tell myself it was about the werewolf or the vampire. But I was already scared. I was just looking for something to feel it about.

Dear, dear Ruthie," he said, and grasped one of my hands in both of his. And although it was an oversimplification of the man, it struck me that this was his single greatest quality: he made everybody feel dear. And the sad truth of this world is that not many people feel that way, and not much of the time.

You can't change anybody's mind. No matter what you say to them. The sooner you figure that out, the happier your life will be.

But that never did any good anyway. People learned by what they experienced. It mattered little what anyone said to anyone. The small

Maybe we've removed all the relevance from the information we teach kids so they have no idea why they should care.

People need help with perspective sometimes. If they're all alone in their own head, they can lose perspective. Sometimes you need to use somebody else like a mirror. Let them reflect back to you the way the world really is.

We couldn't do as much harm if people could feel what they were doing.

You're still here," he said. He was squinting down at her. He didn't seem particularly happy, but he wasn't yelling. Nothing even close to it.

Our problem is not that you feel one way and I feel another. Our problem is coming to us from outside this house.

we weren't put here on earth to take care of each other. And that it's silly to get mad at someone for letting you down when they're just being who they are. She said it's like getting mad at your dog for not being a cat." Then

feel that the truth is simply the truth. And that to shield someone from it is only a manner of treating that person with a lack of respect. I'm sure she didn't mean it that way, though. I'm sure she was doing what she thought best.

When he woke in the morning, his father still had not come back. That was when Remy fully came to understand fear. He thought he had felt it all along. But in that fulcrum of a moment, he realized he had only understood a sort of miniature fear, like fear's little brother.

Catherine Ryan Hyde

That's the thing about this other side we're on. There is no landscape. If you want to see things in any kind of context, you have to pick a context. You have to take one from home.

You're not using your head, dear," she says. "No, of course I'm not," he says. "I'm using my heart.

I have trouble with people like that. Like that woman who was just here. They come up to you in a time of grief, and they can't seem to accept that it's grief. They can't just be in that moment of grief with you. They can't just say, 'Yeah, this is some pretty awful stuff.' They have to try to fix it. They have to solve it for you in a couple of sentences, which is ridiculous,

if you meet someone you don't like, or who doesn't treat you right, try to reserve judgment, because you don't know what that person's going through, and it's probably not so much about you at all.

But they suggest something to get you out of what you're feeling, or they find some reason why it's all for the best. I don't understand why people can't just join you in your grief for a moment.